Death Penalty
by Dex477
Summary: After a duel with a mysterious Dark wizard, Harry is found by Muggle authorities and is given the death penalty. Forced to fight his way out of his situation, Harry questions some of the bigger aspects of life and death. No grammatical/spelling errors. On hiatus.
1. Chapter 1

**Death Penalty**

Rain pounded the roof of Harry Potter's house, thoroughly contrasting the scene inside. The latter included a family had finished eating supper an hour ago, and had begun the usual post-supper wind-down where the Potters cozied up on the furniture and read the _Prophet _or sipped some coffee. Ginny sat on the armchair by the hearth, stirring a finger through the pot of Floo Powder that sat there on the end table with her as she read the newspaper; Harry on the sofa, staring into the warm, crackling fire.

"Weather prophets are predicting rain for the next few days, dear," Ginny said from the armchair. "Will this affect the new task you got from the office?"

Harry got up and strode over to the window, witnessing the rain tear apart his beautiful lawn. "Probably not, knowing the weather in Northern Ireland. The other Aurors aren't worried about it. But with my luck, it probably will rain. Nothing worse than trying to track a potential Dark wizard through miles of slick mud."

"How long do you think this job will take?"

"Not long. So far his work has been messy, kind of hesitant. It's more likely a young adult with a swollen ego, imitating the Dark Arts rather than daring to use them himself."

"That's good news," Ginny said calmly. Harry figured she was probably still worried. He had reassured her so many times… "Come sit with me Harry? I'm cold."

Harry wasn't listening; a dark shape was sweeping up the drive, hood drawn.

Up the drive…

Quickly, numbly, Harry tried to Apparate a few feet to his left, closer to Ginny; never before had he hoped the squeezing sensation wouldn't come as strongly as he had now. _Please, let the sensation not come._

With an all-encompassing squeeze, release, and pop, he appeared right where he had been Apparating to.

Harry gave Ginny a grim and meaningful look.

She nodded, stood up, and ran toward the bedroom. Harry knew she was grabbing James. Good.

The shape would be upon the door at any moment. No friendly figure would wear all black to blend in with the dark rain, break down his defensive anti-Apparition enchantments, and stride calmly up the drive to his front door. No, this was an enemy; that much he knew.

He rolled up his sleeves, drew his wand, and slowly turned to face the door.

_BANG._

The door was thrown off its hinges and a figure, probably male, stepped into the house. It appeared to have kicked the door down, rather than use magic. Definitely male. Harry pointed his wand and aimed a curse; the intruder deflected it with a flick of its wand. Before Harry could see where his curse went, the enemy sent a chunk of door at him, big, hard and FAST –

Harry dodged to the side, waved his wand toward the chunk of door, and Transfigured it into a ninja throwing star, using its previous momentum to send it back to its source, a source now encompassed by a black, smoky shield –

The ninja star made contact with the smoke, and it shattered, sending chunks of metal everywhere; one struck Harry in the ear, and he cried out in pain, but he had no time for pain, he had to fight –

The shield began glowing, and as Harry realized what it was about to do, he quickly conjured a shield around himself; the shards that had exploded out of it were drawn back towards it with slick ferocity, but their target was safe behind a wall of light; Every shard that made it through his glowing, pure shield was transfigured into a dagger of blinding white metal, shooting towards the enemy with fiery force –

Out of time to react, the enemy pointed his wand at the ceiling, dropping a mound of sheetrock between him and the daggers, and they shot into it, peppering out little clouds of gypsum dust; Harry thought they probably penetrated it and made contact with the attacker, but when four bloody, glossy black daggers shot back at him he didn't have time to check. One dagger caught his leg, and pinned him to the wall in a streak of blood; gritting his teeth and muttering painkilling incantations, he jerked it out. _Pain is only a message. A message can be ignored._

Blown sideways by the force of a pushing spell of some sort, Harry landed on, or rather IN, what had been his sofa; rolling to the side to dodge a jet of multicolored light, Harry sent a Stunner wildly towards the figure. No return jet of light followed…

Harry stood up, breathing hard, worried that the attacker was still conscious, worried for Ginny, worried about his leg. In one hand he clutched the dagger he had wrenched from it, and he held it with the tip pointing towards the ground, though the knuckle of his thumb faced the crumbling ceiling.

A chunk of drywall trickled down from the hole in the roof, landing with a _poof _on the mound in front of him. Harry sidestepped it, wand still at the ready; any sign of the attacker and there would be blood.

Cautiously, Harry took another step forward… the silence seemed to weigh down on the wrecked ceiling. Adrenaline fading slightly, the pain in his leg was heating up with every step. _If not for those pain-relieving spells, I would be on the ground right now…_

The glint of an eye; Harry spun towards it, ready to attack, but was forced to create a shield to deflect the opposing spell up through the whole in the ceiling.

Poised to attack as soon as he could, Harry was a freeze frame with his wand out at arm's length, pointing towards the head of the figure, across the mound of sheetrock and plaster. Before he could attack, however, the roof swayed drunkenly, the walls moving with it.

Both opponents looked up at it, fearing for their lives; a chunk of mortar of some kind rained down and struck Harry in the chest – falling backward without a conscious thought formed yet, Harry realized his knife hand had fallen by his side, hard, deeply embedding itself in the man's chest.

Harry gazed at the man in horror; his hood pointed toward his chest, although no face was visible... Unable to move his arm, or any of that side of his body for that matter, Harry lay pinned as his hand was coated in warm, sticky blood…

_No…No… who is he… what does he want? I didn't want this… _"Aargh.."

Harry fell unconscious, into a drugged sleep, knowing that the man who lay next to him slept deeper than even he.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Hey everyone, thanks for favoriting my story :) Anyway, I hope I got you hooked in with that first chapter, I usually write with less actual adventure and more focusing on identifying with the characters, but I got an idea for this one and wanted to write on it too. I'm glad to see you guys liked it, should be a good 5-10 chapters, I'm not really sure how it will all work out. Anyway, thanks for the support :)

Chapter 2

Death… his mind was reliving the last minute of his waking hour in overexposed clarity. The bloody, black steel tip of the dagger sinking into the attacker's flesh, the roof caving over his torso, sticky blood running over his fist, and the slight tilt of the hood as it looked down at the mortal wound in its chest.

Overexposed light permeated the image, creating a distinct ethereal quality.

The figure screamed, over and over again, as the blade sunk into it repeatedly, over and over again Harry witnessed his impotent arm slam into its chest, and the cry of the fallen man echoing in his ears…

_But the man hadn't cried out. He had been silent to the end…_

Shouldn't he be worried about the caved roof that had sent him into this abyss in the first place? He was fairly sure he was alive…

Somehow, every time he got a grip on a conscious thought or two, it slipped away like he was clinging to a wet rock halfway down a thundering black waterfall. The darkness was the water, sweeping him back out to the sea of blackness.

Harry remembered the feeling of Ginny's hand on his shoulder, and suddenly she was there; not speaking, she simply mouthed "I love you," and faded into the darkness; the hand was replaced by Dobby's, who didn't try to speak, and Harry reached out to him; suddenly, Dobby's eyes glazed over and his grip on Harry's shoulder tightened…

_No…_

A gleaming black dagger, quite unlike the knife that had actually killed Dobby, was protruding from between his ribs, and Harry realized his hand that had been patting his back had held the gleaming black dagger, the dagger of night, the dagger of death…

Dobby's grip tightened further, and faded, but the pressure on his shoulder remained; it began to shake, now, and finally, finally, Harry opened his eyes.

The barrel of a gun eyed him back.

_What the heck?_

"There's our boy," a voice said grimly. "Wakey, wakey. You're going to prison, son." The gun disappeared. Clearly if he was going to try anything he would be caught anyway, in this condition.

Groaning, Harry tried to focus his eyes, and realized he needed his glasses. Everything would have been hazy anyway, he decided, and laid his head back down. His hand was still caked in blood, and still gripping the equally blood-caked steel of the dagger...

"What did you do to him, boy? Stab him with the stick, finish him with the knife?" The policeman laughed. Why was he laughing? What stick? Oh yeah, the wand... These were muggles…

"No…" Groan.  
"Tell that to the court. Why hasn't he been cuffed?" He added to the area at large.

"Eh, couldn't move his arm. Left arm, sir. We suspected it was broken, and under all that debris… plus, we didn't know whether we should move the dagger arm…"

"Get the knife out of him…" Harry managed to mumble. His lips felt dry, caked with drywall dust.

"Cuff him."

Someone lifted his back slightly and jerked his arm behind it, and the blackness caved in again.

_A/N: Ok, I know, this chapter was mostly lame, but plot development, yada yada yada. I'll try to keep to a chapter-a-day schedule here, so you won't be disappointed. And in the future, I'll probably just wait until I actually finish writing before I post anything, that would be more worthwhile, I think._ _Thanks for reading, I'll get the next chapter on here ASAP _:)


End file.
